The former Ghana international joined Tottenham as a 20-year-old in 2007 but was told by then manager Martin Jol "one month after my move that he does not need me."

He said Drogba "tried to talk to me, but I wasn't open to good advice, not even that coming from Didier Drogba. He said: 'Focus on football. There are 1,000 coaches and 999 of them will not like you. I had to fight for my place when I came from France.'

"But I was not ready to listen to him."

Instead, Boateng spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on cars, went out regularly in London and was abandoned by his then-wife Jenny, who was seven months pregnant.

He wrote: "I sometimes drank too much, and lost Jenny because I was out all the time and also with other women.

"I never spent an evening at home. And when I was out, I went for it big time. On quite a few those nights I wasted £10,000."